As we mentioned in a previous blog, Amazon offers fantastic opportunities for the SME business. It has an unrivalled customer-base and a vast global footprint. Selling well via Amazon can bring incredible revenue rewards.
However, as we also outlined previously, once you have built up high sales volumes there are challenges to managing the situation. Suddenly, the pressure of meeting customer demand can become a problem and – if not handled effectively and efficiently – your business may begin to suffer losses in revenue and prestige.
This time, let’s look in a little more detail at the problems and pitfalls that can come from achieving a high volume of sales.
Cashflow
Cashflow is the lifeblood of SME business. It’s the oil that greases the machine. Taking your business online and making it reliant on a third-party can obviously bring issues. Amazon pay their third-party sellers fortnightly. This is better than some platforms, but it can still impact your own cashflow timetable in ways that are out of your control, especially true if you are making a high number of sales. There will be a pressure to balance inventory and cash reserves. In particular, you may have to pay for resupply before you are paid for the orders already fulfilled.
Inventory and Data
Your inventory can also pose a challenge when it comes to data management. Third-party sellers have to move large amounts of data between your business and Amazon’s Vendor Central system. It’s unavoidable that more sales equals more information and managing all of this can be a logistical – and error-strewn – nightmare. To really get on top of data management as an amazon seller, you need to take the manual approach out of the equation.
Customer Relationships
More customers means more sales, but it also means more questions, more problems, and more communication generally. In an ideal world, you want to provide a positive, personal response to each customer, but the sheer volume of communication that comes with high sales makes this difficult. Again, as with your inventory, it becomes a matter of data transfer. When you transfer data manually, the challenge of keeping up great customer communications can stray into the impossible. You need a system that will take care of a lot of the bulk, leaving your staff available to devote more time to specific queries.
Reputation
All of the points above come together in one metric: your reputation. Enjoying high sales volumes can be a short-lived thing if you can’t keep up with the workload they create. As you become more inefficient, your service levels drop, and your customer satisfaction follows. It’s crucial to turn this negative feedback into a positive loop to maintain your credibility on Amazon.
There is a solution to all of this. Three letters… EDI. By using an integrated EDI solution you can automate so much of your data transfer to be error-free, efficient and lessen the burden on your team. In our next blog we’ll go into specifically how an EDI can help you optimise and maintain your high sales volume.
Until then, get in touch to find out more about how SuperDisty can help you integrate EDI.
Call us on +353-1524-1640 for a conversation today.
